this woman

this woman came from between the pages of a john steinbeck novel without a hero so you made yourself a beacon in the long brackish night teeth grating on the skeleton ribs of radiators surging in basements blind in the hall on the way to the toilet where men from all walks of life end up shitting their guts out for love and money or firm tits and some peace of any kind before the scalp is peeled back to reveal sunshine knots of brain so lovely in the threading that you almost forget everything your mother told you when you left home drunk and raw on her cheap brandy and rollie cigarettes traveling the world savage hungry to learn the grift you find her there in the wires and in the flesh you burn her like a brand sweaty and hot and deep leave her or she leaves you and on until the boughs of naked trees burst into flame she an ember in dry grass spreading over the surface of all your days until there is nothing left to mourn but the revelation that all you’ll ever know for certain is her.